As part of many processes, including the operation of a data processing system, security analysts monitor events that occur. Such monitoring may be used to detect anomalous events, such as a breach of the system security, including those known by persons of ordinary skill in the art as a “security event”. Security event management (SEM) systems may be used to provide limited visual cues to alert security analysts to the existence of such anomalies. These cues usually take the form of simple event count charts.